Overview
GWAVIX is an all-in-one, gateway, anti-virus, ant spam, managed service that protects networks from all HTTP SMTP and FTP traffic. It has been designed from conception to feature the scalability, reliability and low cost of ownership required by the Novell GroupWise market. On this foundation, the product has been evolved to suit the needs of the corporate market place. The architects of GWAVIX have many years of experience implementing other gateway anti-virus solutions. From the beginning they sought to engineer solutions to the problems common in these products. The key elements that have put GWAVIX head and shoulders above similar solutions are described below.

Zero-Effort Virus Management
GWAVIX minimizes administrative overhead. Central servers contact each GWAVIX unit every 10 minutes. The 10-minute interval connection process includes an integrity check on the software and operating system, updated security patches, updated virus signature files, and system changes. Through this mechanism, the customer can be confident that the GWAVIX server is never more than 10 minutes out of date.

Intelligent Spam Handling
GWAVIX uses a multi-point strategy for identifying and handling spam. This includes full rule based text and header analysis. Header analysis is designed to detect the presence of common spammer identity hiding methods. To optimize the capabilities of the system, it profiles the mail traffic for each implementation and uses the information to tune rule trigger sensitivity.

This system allows aggressive spam identification with minimal false positives, ensuring that filtering does not degrade the reliability of email as a business communication tool.

Anti-Virus User Experience
Traditional solutions introduce latency into the user web browsing experience and email delivery time. In the case of HTTP, this latency exists because the traditional solution is required to download the entire web page into the scanner before scanning can begin. Although scanning itself may only take one second, the user's normal experience is changed because they do not see the page build as expected. This results in an apparently slow user experience. Because GWAVIX processes each page piece-by-piece and passes them on as soon as it is scanned, the user experience is very similar to a normal browsing experience. This creates solution transparency and virus scanning of user traffic without them being aware of it. In the case of email, GWAVIX's high level of scalability ensures that real-time mail throughput is maintained, even when very large messages hit the system. Up to forty messages can be processed simultaneously, ensuring that mail virus scanning does not result in bottlenecks in the email system.

Hardened Operating System
Hardening an operating system involves removing nonessential services, facilities and code. The result is an operating system that is easier to lock down and manage than an operating system intended for general server use. Logically, this creates a more secure sever with less natural vulnerabilities.

Servers operating in a security function, including anti-virus, should run on a hardened operating system to promote solution integrity. The vulnerability of software security solutions to hacking, viruses, worms or Trojans are as attributable to open holes in the operating system, as they are to open holes in the software itself. It is critical that system integrity is maintained if software is to deliver the protection that it has been purchased to provide. For this reason a hardened operating system is essential in a gateway anti-virus solution. Solutions without hardened operating systems should be viewed with extreme caution.